Game of Thrones: A Two-Season Synopsis of the Most Complicated Show on TV

Warning: Spoilers (For Seasons 1 and 2) Are Coming

Game of Thrones! The third season of the HBO medieval epic debuts this Sunday, packed full of drama, dragons and an infamously complex cast of characters. If you’ve never read the books or watched the show — or at least, paid much attention — you might be wondering: Who are all these goddamn people? Why are they fighting each other? Why does everyone want to slap the little blond boy in the face?

It’s OK if you’re confused. Keeping track of what happens in George R. R. Martin’s books — and the (no joke) simplified HBO TV adaptation — requires a lot of focus, family trees and, yes, a fair amount of fannish devotion. So if you need a reminder about where we left off in the medieval world of Westeros, or if you’ve never watched at all and are prepared for an unbelievably dense infodump, then get ready to import the relevant details of the last two seasons of the Seven Kingdoms into your brain.

In happier times, we totally thought Ned Stark was going to be the main character of the show.

The Sad, Sad Story of House Stark

Things haven’t gone very well for the Stark family since the beginning of the series, when Robert Baratheon, King of the Seven Kingdoms, asked his former war buddy, Lord of Winterfell Ned Stark, to leave his northern stronghold and help him deal with the whole running-the-kingdom business as the new Hand of the King. Though not enthused about the idea – and even less enthused than his wife, Catelyn — Ned ultimately headed south to the capital city of King’s Landing with his daughters Sansa and Arya — and the secret knowledge that Robert’s wife Cersei may have been behind the death of the previous Hand of the King.

It did not sound like it was going to go well, and it did not. Ned Stark uncovered the terrible secret that Robert’s children with Cersei were not his children at all, but rather products of incest between Cersei and her twin brother, Jaime Lannister. At the same time, Cersei conspired to have Robert killed on a hunting trip, and after his death Ned and Cersei played the titular game of thrones over control of the Seven Kingdoms. Ned lost both the game, and in a major first-season shocker, his head.

Ned’s death destabilized Westeros and sparked the ongoing War of the Five Kings, a massive military and political maelstrom wherein numerous power players are jockeying for the throne. One of them is Ned’s eldest son Robb Stark, who reacted to the death of his father by proclaiming himself King in the North, rallying his bannermen, and setting out to destroy the Lannisters. He was doing pretty well, too, until three significant mistakes: First, he fell in love with a random lady from the far-off land of Volantis and married her, despite being promised to a daughter of House Frey as part of a critical political alliance.

Image: HBO

Second, after Robb’s forces managed to capture Jaime, the eldest and most beloved Lannister son involved the aforementioned twincest, Catelyn secretly (and idiotically) released Jaime and tasked the lady-knight Brienne with escorting him home. Why? Because he promised to send back her captive daughters in return, and for basically no reason she believed him. This infuriates the Northmen in Robb’s army whose sons were killed by Jaime, and also makes Robb look really uncool in front of his friends. (Plus, the joke is on Catelyn, because Arya isn’t even at King’s Landing anymore — she escaped, made friends with an awesome Braavosi assassin who gave her a mysterious coin, and is currently in the Riverlands pretending to be a boy.)

Third, Robb sent Theon Greyjoy — the son of Balon Greyjoy, King of the Iron Islands — to ask his father to rally the formidable naval forces of the Iron Islands against the Lannisters. Theon grew up with Robb at Winterfell as a ward/captive but hasn’t been home to the Iron Islands since he was a child. So when his father rejects him as an outsider, Theon decides to prove himself to his countrymen by betraying Robb, attacking Winterfell and pretending to kill Robb’s two little brothers, Bran and Rickon (who also escaped). Note: Theon Greyjoy is an idiot. Thanks to his poor tactical planning, Winterfell was retaken at the end of last season by a siege of Northmen led by Ramsay Snow, the bastard son of Lord Bolton.

King Joffrey, the worst possible human.

King’s Landing: Where Bad Things Happen to Good People (And Vice Versa)

Since the death of the former king, Robert Baratheon, his teenage “son” Joffrey has been ruling the throne. And by ruling, I mean being an irredeemable sociopath who delights in torturing and tormenting everyone around him, particularly Sansa, the daughter of the dearly departed Ned Stark whom he had once been engaged to marry.

At the end of last season, King’s Landing faced a massive invasion by the armies of Stannis Baratheon, the brother of the deceased King Robert who decided to claim the Iron Throne after he heard about the whole incest/not-actually-Robert’s-children situation. He invaded the Blackwater Bay with a huge naval force (aka the Battle of the Blackwater), and might very well have taken King’s Landing if not for the bravery and cunning tactics of Tyrion, the youngest Lannister son who was serving as the Hand of the King.

Despite being unbelievably awesome in every way, Tyrion is typically treated with little to no respect by his family because he is a dwarf, and also because his family is generally the worst. To wit, after saving absolutely everyone, his sister Cersei very likely tried to have one of her soldiers kill him during the battle, leaving him with a permanent facial scar. Also, Tyrion’s father Tywin then rewarded him for his sacrifices and success by stripping him of all power and taking credit for the victory. Yeah.

Images: HBO

The Lannisters have also been joined by the Johnny-come-lately family of the Tyrells, whose forces showed up at the end of the Battle of the Blackwater and threw their support behind King Joffrey. As a result, the beautiful Margaery Tyrell, former wife of Robert’s younger brother Renly Baratheon (who declined to acknowledge Stannis as the rightful King and was subsequently murdered by a shadow monster), is now engaged to King Joffrey, mercifully releasing Sansa from her hellish betrothal.

Sansa is still a prisoner of the Lannisters, however, particularly as her brother Robb still marches against them with the armies of the North. But she may have a supporter in Lord Petyr Baelish, a master schemer in the grand political game behind the Iron Throne. On the one hand, Baelish (aka Littlefinger) has had a mad crush on Sansa’s mom Catelyn for several decades now, and likely views her daughter as the pretty, young next best thing. On the other hand, he betrayed her father Ned Stark to the Lannisters and helped them take back the Iron Throne (and Ned’s head), so … it’s complicated.

Creepy meets joyless: Melisandre and Stannis.

The Red Lady, Stannis and Religious Pyromania

Defeated at the Battle of Blackwater, Stannis is likely licking his wounds at Dragonstone with the help of Melisandre, aka the Red Lady. A priestess from the eastern city of Asshai, the Red Lady has converted Stannis from the traditional faith of The Seven (think the Holy Trinity, but with more parts) to the Lord of Light, which involves a lot of setting things on fire and being creepy.

On a related note, one of Melisandre’s powers includes the ability to become “pregnant” with an evil shadow monster; she gave birth to one last season that subsequently slipped in the tent of Stannis’ brother Renly and murdered him, removing yet another rival from Stannis’s path to the Iron Throne.

Stannis’ conversion has disturbed many of his followers, particularly since he’s gone full-on cult follower and now does just about everything Melisandre tells him to. Also, while there’s no direct evidence for an intimate relationship between Stannis and Melisandre in the books, they are totally sexing in the TV series, because … HBO I guess.

Davos Seaworth — a former smuggler and one of Stannis’ closest advisers before the Red Lady came around — is particularly unhappy about their relationship. He convinced Stannis to leave her behind when they sail for the disastrous Battle of Blackwater, and at the end of Season 2, we don’t know whether Davos survived it.

Dreamsicle Jon Snow.

Jon Snow, the Wall and the Undead Hordes

Far north of all the scheming and politicking stands the Wall, a massive, ancient barrier between the civilized lands of the Seven Kingdoms and the frozen wastes inhabited by the wildlings (also known as the Free Folk). The lands beyond the Wall are also inhabited by the White Walkers (known in the books as the Others), mysterious, brutal, undead creatures who you really don’t want to run into in the middle of the night, although it’s been so long since anyone saw the latter that they’re largely regarded as a myth.

Living along the Wall are members of the Night’s Watch: grumpy, perpetually shivering men whose commitment to the military brotherhood (aka “taking the black”) is lifelong, with desertion punishable by death. Their sole job is to guard the Wall, protecting the Seven Kingdoms from the wildlings and the White Walkers, though few people outside the Night’s Watch know (or believe) the White Walkers have returned because they’re too busy fighting each other in the south.

The most notable (and dreamy) member of the Night’s Watch is Jon Snow, the bastard son of Ned Stark. When Season 2 ended, the brothers of the Night’s Watch were facing down a shambling army of White Walkers far beyond the Wall while Snow had was captured by a group of wildlings (including the equally dreeeamy wildling woman, Ygritte) and pretended to turn on the Night’s Watch to gain their trust. Last we saw, he was on his way to meet the wildling leader, Mance Rayder — himself a former member of the Night’s Watch.

Daenerys Targaryen, who spent most of last season screaming, “WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS?”

Essos, aka Dragontime With Daenerys Targaryen

Before Robert Baratheon took the throne away from the (admittedly insane) Aerys II, Westeros was ruled for hundreds of years by the Targaryen Dynasty, and young Daenerys Targaryen believes herself to be the last living Targaryen — and thus, the rightful heir to Westeros. The bad news is that she’s stuck across the Narrow Sea in Essos, a whole other continent to the east.

The good news is that Daenerys has three fire-breathing dragons for pets, beasts that had been extinct for hundreds of years until she dramatically hatched them inside the funeral pyre of her dead husband, the warlord Drogo. The dragons were extinct, by the way, largely because people hunted them to death for being unstoppable killing machines. And once they’re full-grown, Daenerys is prepared to use them as weapons of mass destruction to get whatever she wants (see: the Iron Throne).

At the end of Season 2, Daenerys — along with her dragons, a small army of nomadic warriors called the Dothraki, and her adviser, exiled knight Jorah Mormont — had just incinerated a powerful warlock who tried to take her dragons, looted a palace in Essos and was planning to use the riches to buy a ship… a ship that can take her to Westeros.